This past summer, I was being a good twenty-something and flossing my teeth with one of those tiny flosser-thingies with the handle on them when the floss caught itself in a little gap between one of my molars and the… Read More ›
Social Justice
The Whiteness of My Discontent: How Privilege Affects The Way I Protest
My whiteness speaks volumes, but I cannot hear them. It tells the world around me that my life matters—that the shedding of my blood and cracking of my bones will bring with it consequences denied to darker-skinned men. In my… Read More ›
Mother’s Milk & Mace: A Poem For Ferguson
Just about once a year, I am struck by an unshakable urge to write poetry and, as it turns out, that once a year is now. I don’t claim to be a poet, but hopefully the words I’ve written down… Read More ›
When Hope Is Engulfed In Flames: Ferguson On The Night of The Darren Wilson Grand Jury Decision
Hope is like an appendage that hangs from your soul. It is flexible and it is lithe. It reaches out to grab hold of the things it needs to sustain it. And, like any other limb, it doesn’t grow back… Read More ›
The Men in the Plastic Masks: How Anonymous Complicates Protests in Ferguson
A movement without organization is little more than a ship without a rudder. Take an idea—any idea, no matter how noble or just—and let it loose upon the world in great numbers without anyone to guide it and it won’t… Read More ›
Country Club Problems: The Dangers of Driving While Black In St Louis County
Country Club Hills. The name conjures up images of gated communities chockablock with gaudy McMansions and Maseratis that sit at the end of enormous gravel driveways; places with front lawns the size of football fields and guesthouses that are bigger… Read More ›
The Center Cannot Hold: St. Louis County on the Eve of the Darren Wilson Verdict
The meeting starts and everyone around me instinctively stands up and faces towards the front of the room. It takes me a couple seconds to realize they’ve all angled themselves towards the American Flag and that they’re about to say… Read More ›
The Last of The Gang to Die: How Democrats Lost the Deep South
On the evening of July 2, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson lay down beneath the grand canopy of his four post bed in The White House’s 2nd floor living room, exhausted; his mind surely swirling with that mixture of clear conscience… Read More ›
Different Shades of Black: A Conversation About Race & Class in America & Abroad
On the day that I happened to visit Tallahassee last summer, a group of student activists who call themselves The Dream Defenders were going into their 3rd week of physically occupying the lobby to Governor Scott’s Capitol office in protest… Read More ›
The Deep South Up North: The Struggle For American Indian Voting Rights in South Dakota
What happens to an injustice unheard? Does it wisp skywards like warm smoke from a gun or deflate down, dissolve and be done? Does it cry itself to sleep or rage into the night then softly weep? Maybe it hardens… Read More ›
Virally Suppressed - Muckraking For The Modern World 